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the last voyages

|: 014. Video : When the Music's Over, But the Song Stays in Your Head :|

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     So, I've seen how these sorts of questions go over around here. I know I'm opening myself up to a lot of troll answers, and angry defensiveness, and cagey suspicion, and this is me saying I'm okay with whatever comes my way. Bring it on. Because at least one of you is going to give me a straight answer, and I guess...

     [Slevin is sitting in his room talking to the communicator, toying with something in his hands. It flashes gold just at the edge of the view screen when he hesitates to look down at it, takes a breath, continues anyway:]

     I guess that's what I need. Just one. So: what was the worst thing you ever lost?

     And how did you decide to handle it?

     [ Private : Chris D'Amico ]

     You were right. I'm an asshole, but I can at least admit when I made a mistake.

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[She nods.]

They bought my body after I drowned when I was fifteen.

I came from a planet with oceans.

Nobody missed me.

That's all I know.

[Not maudlin, barely wistful, something more like an accounting, a careful repetition of what she has been allowed to remember, neither the first repetition nor the last. She says it like a litany, like a rosary: resonant in the abstract, but rote in the moment.]

[She wasn't going to let Slevin see her cry, but she's not afraid to show it to Mira.]

If you disappear on us 'ere I will take the multiverse apart to find you.

[She looks away. Not because it hurts, exactly. It's just so big. It's like looking at a sun straight-on: not actually painful, but dazzling, a poor tactical decision. She thinks about confessing. I hurt Captain Bush, I killed a little girl who couldn't fight me. Not to push Iris away; she's comfortable in the knowledge that it wouldn't work. But it would hurt her a little, push her back, the equivalent of tossing on sunglasses. It would also, she realizes, be selfish, a prompt for reassurance, rolling in the warmth. In the end, she doesn't, not because it would hurt Iris, and not even because she's ashamed, but because keeping her missions secret is too deeply ingrained a habit. It wasn't a mission. But it still feels like one. ]

It would be okay, if you couldn't.

I mean. I know you'd try. But if it comes to it. I like the idea of being remembered.

It'd be less bad than not trying, but it'd never be okay with me.

[And then she huffs out a self-deprecating sort of laugh.]

That's partly my pride talking. But same like with Victor: you got brought 'ere for a chance to choose what you want to be. I can't bear that being taken away.

The woman with the gloves.

She didn't care about the past, or the future. She didn't have much more memory than I do. But she lived her life in a way that made her happy, every day. People loved her and she fell in love with them over and over again.

She died young too. Some people do.

I don't know how to be like she was. I would if I really did get to choose, if I could press a button and be her instead of me from now on. But I've been happy more than I've been hurting, I think. For a while. In this present.

It's not just.

[A criterion of evaluation that only even remotely occurs to her as a result of spending time with Harvey.]

But it's okay.

Oh, people are always wittering at me about just. About deserving.

[Yeeeah, Iris knows where that came from as well, and although her tone is dismissive, her mouth softens with affection.]

Honestly, though, it's bollocks. No one gets what they deserve and I'm not sure I'd want to live in a universe where we did. We get what we give, for the most part; what we give, shot through with random variables thrown off by the alchemy of existence.

She was lovely. But I'd rather be remembered and all.

She killed people.

[So do I.]

She chose that. Gave that.

I seem to 'ave a weak spot for people that do. I'd rather they didn't. I can often see why they do.

[She sighs.]

Love's not conditional. Not mine, any road.

I know that.

[A little smile, tart-sweet, sideways but not shy. And she does; as much as she understands it, she knows it. And she understands it better than she realizes she does. She hasn't got a clear handle on the compassion of love, the understanding of healthy love, but she understands selflessness, understands throwing herself into someone, understands unconditional.]

It's the rest of the universe I was thinking about. She forgot because she tore up people's lives like confetti. She earned it. Maybe I did too. How would I know?

By people tearing pieces out of yours, in my experience. That's what burns me about the memories; it stops you learning. Trees get their shapes by year after year of growing new shapes around their broken branches.

[She remembers Rorschach: her precious bonsai blackthorn, her dark star. Mira is a silver birch, she thinks: always growing upwards, always reaching for the sky regardless of what may have scarred her. Mira's radiance will always reach up and outwards.]

Part of me'll always want to stand between you and the wind. Luckily, the universe never lets us do that as much as we want.

No, I mean -

[A brittleness, flecks of fear in her frustration. It is so easy for her to feel unreal, when she can't find the way to say what she means. Jaw tight, then a breath.]

I mean. How do I know I didn't choose it. The galaxy has plenty of children no one would miss. Why did they pick me, out of all of them? Convenience, chance? Or what if I already chose it. What if I was mostly what they needed, and I just didn't belong to them yet. What if I was always getting back what I gave?

What if I was already a killer? What if no one missed me because I chose to leave them behind?

You know, I've learned an awful lot about killing since I came 'ere. I always knew, on some level, in my blood and bones, what drives us to kill. We all do. Humans are a hunting animal, so am I. We're predators.

I've learned about the beauty and thrill in it, about the satisfaction of pulling off a surgical job exactly right. About the intimacy of it; about 'ow it can be an act of love. And I've learned why a person might choose it.

[She looks back at Mira, steady and constant.]

I don't mean for that as absolution. That's not mine to give. Say you find out, one day. Would you rather it'd been your choice? Or not?

I don't know.

[She just - she really has no idea. She doesn't want absolution, particularly, feels very little visceral guilt, even though she can model it for a philosophical purpose. She doesn't know what she wants, even if she wants to choose or not. If she knew whether she already had, she thinks she might have a better idea.]

Choices are 'ard too, aren't they? Every one you make, you cut off a whole raft of other ones.

That's why I mostly don't kill people. I'd've been good at it. Maybe. Possibly.

[And possibly not. Iris is capable of shutting her compassionate side away and not looking at it, but it tends to leak anyway.]

D'you want to come and eat ice cream and watch cheesy Terran movies from the 1960s for a bit?

Edited 2014-07-18 13:10 (UTC)

[She doesn't think of her current state as one that requires comfort. She has been vicious, she has been bereft; now she's only frustrated, lost. She's leery of distractions; on the Queen Favor, on who knows how many ships before, they were a way to forget, a way to ignore her cravings and hollow places.

But. She trusts Iris not to let it go too far, not to let her forget herself again. Which means more, at least to Mira, at least now, than trusting her not to stop loving her. And it would be nice, to quit gnawing on it. At least for a little while.]

Yeah. Alright.

Edited 2014-07-18 14:01 (UTC)

[Barbarella. Salty caramel and Bailey's. Sparkly toenails in every shade of the spectrum.

LMK if you want to log or handwave it <3 <3]

[It's the lack of any particular emotion at all that gives him pause - not anger, not vengeance, not regret, not despairing, but simply stated. His dark eyes narrow slightly with consideration.]

Is that normal, where you come from?

I'm not from anywhere.

I don't know. No. I doubt I'm the first or the only pair of hands they used but I've never met another. If it does happen, no one knows about it. Thats why they pick nobodies.

But you're not from here. You came from somewhere other than the Barge.

Whoever they are, it's a smart move on their part, but you've also got to know that that strategy alone means they know it's wrong, right?

Before the barge, I was on a shithole desert planet called Malvir for less than a week. Before that I was on a spaceship called the Queen Favor. Before that, an academic outpost on a gentrified border moon. Before that, another ship, and before that, another job, and another ship, and so on. It starts getting faded and jumbled the further back I go.

I came through places. Not from.

[She tilts her head. They know it's wrong. It sounds very unlike them.]

How does that follow?

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|: 014. Video : When the Music's Over, But the Song Stays in Your Head :|

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